Wildfire and fire mosaic effects on bird species richness and community composition in south-western Australia

[摘要] A fire management strategy of deliberate patch-mosaic burning (PMB) is postulated to promote biodiversity by providing a range of habitat patches with different fire histories, habitat qualities, and vegetation ages at a given scale. We investigated the response of avian fauna to fire, particularly species richness and community composition, in a landscape composed of a diversity of vegetation ages including long-unburned refuges (age 26 years), compared with a landscape of uniform vegetation ages recovering from an extensive and intense fire. There was no effect of heterogeneity in vegetation age on species richness at whole forest management block (about 6000 ha), or local (2 ha) scales. There were different responses of particular species to vegetation age. Nine species showed responses to vegetation age at local (2 ha) scales, which is presumably a surrogate for availability of key resources and which changes over time. Australian Pipit (Anthus australis Vieillot, 1818) were absent from swamp vegetation 5.5 years in the landscape studied, and indications of flexible responses of some species at landscape scales allows some flexibility in fuel management strategies and the scale at which they are applied with respect to avifauna.

[学科分类] 植物学

[关键词] feeding;growth stage;guilds;jarrah;nesting;pyrodiversity